Lecturer
- About
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- School/Department
- School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture
Biography
I joined LLMVC in 2022 as a Lecturer in Language & Linguistics after two short stints in Greifswald, DE and Newcastle, UK.
My research focuses on how adults and infants interact in conversation using discourse particles, prosody, and gestures. Much of this work revolves around non-assertive speech acts (aka 'non-canonical' questions).
If you are interested in PhD supervision on any of these topics, feel free to send me your proposal and CV. I am also open to mentoring Postdoctoral Fellowships (British Academy, Leverhulme, Horizon Europe's MSCA).
Qualifications
- PhD Linguistics (Cognitive Stream)2019 - University or British Columbia
Internal Memberships
Director of PGR for the School of Language, Literature, Music & Visual Culture
REF Co-lead (Linguistics) for UoA27 (with Prof Andrew Gorden and Prof David Wheatley)
Co-director for the Centre of Training and Research in Linguistics (with Prof Robert McColl Millar)
Latest Publications
Negotiating truth and relevance: a new typology of English rising declaratives
Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 249, pp. 23-43Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.010
Quantifying Division of Labour: Effects of Clause Type on Intonational Meaning
Speech Communication, vol. 172, 103265Contributions to Journals: ArticlesRethinking structural growth: Insights from the acquisition of interactional language
Glossa, vol. 10, no. 1Contributions to Journals: ArticlesProsodic variation in negative and positive polarity questions in English
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsProsodic variation in negative and positive polarity questions in English
3rd International Conference on Tone and Intonation, pp. 1Contributions to Conferences: Posters
- Research
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Research Overview
My research explores the syntax, pragmatics, prosody and gestures of interactional language in adults and infants. At the prosody-pragmatics interface, my research looks at how intonation encodes speaker attitudes and expectations. A particular focus here has been to explore how intonation contributes to the mapping of clause types and speech acts. At the syntax-pragmatics interface, I have worked on the syntactic integration of discourse particles in a range of unrelated languages. This work shows that discourse particles are subject to similar syntactic mechanisms as constituents inside the clause. At the syntax-prosody interface, I show that a syntactic integration of prosody explains the distributional facts of various contours and particles. Lately, I have started investigating how co-speech gesture signals (non-)canonical meaning and how infants draw on multimodal cues to scaffold language acquisition.
Research Areas
Accepting PhDs
I am currently accepting PhDs in Linguistics.
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.
Research Specialisms
- Early Childhood Studies
- English Language
- Linguistics
Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
- Publications
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Page 1 of 2 Results 1 to 25 of 38
Negotiating truth and relevance: a new typology of English rising declaratives
Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 249, pp. 23-43Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.010
Quantifying Division of Labour: Effects of Clause Type on Intonational Meaning
Speech Communication, vol. 172, 103265Contributions to Journals: ArticlesRethinking structural growth: Insights from the acquisition of interactional language
Glossa, vol. 10, no. 1Contributions to Journals: ArticlesProsodic variation in negative and positive polarity questions in English
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsProsodic variation in negative and positive polarity questions in English
3rd International Conference on Tone and Intonation, pp. 1Contributions to Conferences: PostersModelling and feedback in the context of early questions
PsyArXiv Preprints (Preprint). 6 pages.Other Contributions: Other ContributionsBritish English negative questions aren’t all acquired alike, are they?: Acquisition at the syntax-discourse interface
Contributions to Conferences: PapersAcquisition of Non-Canonical Questions in English
The Handbook of Noncanonical Questions. Eckardt, R., Walkden, G., Dehé, N. (eds.). Oxford Univerity Press; OxfordChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters (Peer-Reviewed)Three Stages in The Acquisition of English Response Tokens: A Window into the Development of Common Ground
Cahiers de praxématique, vol. 84, no. 2Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15b3u
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/e02ca4b3-3649-4e28-98c9-15b632928f15/download
Input beyond the Threshold: Explaining Auxiliary Initial Assertions in a British English Early Talker
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsJavanese discourse particles: interlocutor perspective in the syntax kok
Studia LinguisticaContributions to Journals: ArticlesRethinking child-caregiver interaction in syntactic and pragmatic development
Contributions to Conferences: Oral PresentationsMultimodal profiles of different (negative) question types.
Contributions to Conferences: PapersWhat's a question to start with?: Auxiliary placement in English early talkers.
Contributions to Conferences: PapersExploring caregiver intervention on early question-answer sequences.
Contributions to Conferences: PapersA flexible model for exposing and mitigating the hidden curriculum in the transition to Higher Education
Open Scholarship and Teaching, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 30-55Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.56230/osotl.69
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/aae2e31c-f1d8-4d9e-882d-dfc85e5b1e6c/download
Caregiver modelling and feedback in the context of early questions
Contributions to Conferences: PapersEmergence of syntactic structure through the lens of interaction
Contributions to Conferences: Oral PresentationsEarly management of common ground: Lessons from L1 acquisition of interactional language.
Contributions to Conferences: Oral PresentationsDiagnosing use conventions of English Rising Declaratives
Contributions to Conferences: PapersCo-speech gestures in negative questions.: Evidence from American soap opera actors
Contributions to Conferences: PapersWhat's a question to start with? Auxiliaries in input to English early talkers.
Many Paths to Language 2023, pp. P1.07Contributions to Conferences: PostersJavanese discourse particles: interlocutor perspective is in the syntax, kok!
Contributions to Conferences: PapersUnfolding trees: Evidence from the syntax of early interactional language
Contributions to Conferences: PapersTailored feedback in language learning: synergies in linguistics and computer science
Aberdeen Interdisciplinary Open SessionsContributions to Conferences: Posters